Monday, 15 July 2013

WUWT not interested in my slanted opinion

And this is even before you take into account the exaggeration that seemed to contaminate the surface temperature records in the latter part of the 20th century – because of urbanisation, selective closure of weather stations and unexplained “adjustments”. Two Greek scientists recently calculated that for 67 per cent of 181 globally distributed weather stations they examined, adjustments had raised the temperature trend, so they almost halved their estimate of the actual warming that happened in the later 20th century.

I tried to direct those WUWT readers that are interested in both sides of the conversation to an old post of mine about why these Greek scientist were wrong and mainly how their study was abused and exaggerated by WUWT.

Naturally, I did not formulate it that way, but in a perfectly neutral way suggested that people could find more information about the above quote as my blog. I see no way my comment could have gone against the WUWT commenting policy. Still the response was:

Strange, people calling themselves skeptics that are not interested in hearing all sides. I see that some people from WUWT still find their way here to see what the moderator does not allow. Here it is:

How come then that last week the World Meteorological Organisation produced a breathless report claiming that “the decadal rate of increase (of world temperature) between 1991-2000 and 2001-2010 was unprecedented”? It took professor Ed Hawkins of Reading University a short time to point out that this was no longer true if you compared 1993-2002 and 2003-2012 – ie, if you took the most up-to-date records. In that case, the latest decade showed a smaller increase over the preceding decade than either of the preceding decades did. In other words, the temperature standstill of the past 16 years has begun to show up in the decade-by-decade data.

Buried in the comments at WUWT, you will find the neutral comment by Ed Hawkins himself:

These post are worth reading, critical and honest, so unlike WUWT. At the end of the first Hawkins' post you can find this summary of his position:

Note firstly that different temperature datasets will give slightly different warming rates. However, 2001-2010 is the warmest 10-year period in the instrumental record. This is evidence enough of a warmer climate, but NOT of an accelerated warming rate.

In other words, the discussion is not about whether the temperature is increasing, but whether this increase is getting faster, is accelerating. With a lot of goodwill, which after years of daily misinformation I no longer have with respect to WUWT, you could argue that Ridley's version is a correct representation. However, I would argue that Hawkins position sounds very different as Ridley's version of it and may not even have passed moderation at WUWT.

Hawkins' arguments sound strong. I looks like the WMO permitted itself an error here. It is actually strange that such a statement about the change of the global mean temperature has ended up in a report on changes in extreme weather. And it is just as strange that this was the part Ridley found interesting for his guest post on changes in extreme weather. Both likely a symptom of an educational system that is focused on the holy mean and neglects variability, but I digress.

For those interested in the WMO report, please have a look at the original: the summary report (still 20 pages) and the full report (not much longer, 61 pages).